Research in Portugal has taken a step forward in understanding blindness, through the eyes of fruit flies.
Retinitis Pigmentosa – an eye disease which causes progressive degeneration of the retina and vision loss - is a major cause of human blindness.
A team from ITQB NOVA and EARA member Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, has now identified a way to produce rhodopsin – a protein that is essential to vision and crucial for animal sight.
The study, published in EMBO Reports, used fruit flies and human cells as models, to better understand how the production of rhodopsin is regulated.
The work included a collaboration with researchers from the University of Oxford, UK, and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia.